You can’t really be prepared for Men & Chicken. Or at least, I wasn’t. If you’re expecting a frolicking three-stooges-style physical comedy, you’ll get a few more emotional beats than you had anticipated. If you’re expecting a smart, Lanthimos-style cut of a metaphor about society, you aren’t wrong; but there’s just a lot more hitting each other with stuffed foxes, too.

Brothers Gabriel (David Dencik) and Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) are both a little odd (Elias far moreso), and it all begins to make more sense after the death of their father. In the traditional “videotape from the grave” format, the boys’ father tells them that he is not their real father, and that their true parentage can be found on the small Island of Ork, in the giant, rundown home of a formerly disgraced scientist. Just like that, Gabriel and Elias find themselves on the front porch of their father’s house, being beaten mercilessly at the hands of their three half-brothers (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Soren Malling, and Nicolas Bro). Over the rest of the runtime, the five new-found siblings learn what it’s like to live when more people like themselves, in a blend of physical violence, haunted house-type titillation, and outrageous character beats.

For the most part, the film hums along as would be expected, even if a few of the character beats seemingly come out of nowhere. Much of the narrative feels like the inner pieces of a puzzle, wherein it’s difficult to clarify in the moment, but where Men & Chicken finishes during its third act is really a clear picture the closer we get to the closing credits. There are secrets in the house which are understood right as our two main characters arrive: they aren’t allowed upstairs, they aren’t allowed downstairs, they’ll surely go in the cage at some point. Hooks like these aren’t innovative, but at least they still give the film a sense of direction, if not any more purpose.

And so while director Anders Thomas Jonsen’s comedy is a bit imbalanced, there’s a smidge more context that nearly gets lost around the edges. Gabriel and Elias are both introduced during the opening moments of the film in their element, which is to say alone and with little connection to the world around them. Gabriel sits at the edge of his dying father’s bed, looking comfortably alone and downtrodden, while Elias goes on what we learn is one in a procession of failed dates. The process of finding, meeting, and “bonding” with their half-brothers give them a feeling of relevancy, a theme reflected in the town itself, as the mayor of the Island of Ork struggles to (literally) keep the island on the map.

Men & Chicken doesn’t quite have the consistent tone necessary to be characterized as a fever dream, but sometimes it comes pretty darn close. Nevertheless, the film is unlike anything else you’ll see this year, with a comfortably bizarre Mads Mikkelsen leading a truly bizarre comedy.